Since the environment we buy our products from has become ever more global, it has become more and more difficult to keep track of where and these products are made, and if they’ve been manufactured in a way that adheres to our principles. Now, however, a new Swedish blockchain company looks set to change all that.

PaperTale is a new venture in which you’re able to trace a product from its inception using the blockchain, and it brings with it lots of new possibilities.

Let’s say you’re looking at a table, but you’re curious as to the worker’s living standards where it was made, and wish to see if they were paid a fair wage. You can scan the product with your smartphone, and check to see if the employee’s who made the table receive salaries fit for the acceptable living standards in their country.

Or perhaps you want to get verified information about the table’s supply chain and its environmental impact? Again, just scan the product with your phone and the information will be relayed to you on the screen. Using PaperTale, consumers can be much more ethical with their purchases, choosing products that benefit the workers or the environment most.

This traceability is made a reality through PaperTale by way of special protocols built on the blockchain. These enable you to see detailed facets regarding the methods and ethics used to produce the item. On top of that, through PaperTale and your smartphone, it’s possible to send tips directly to the worker who made your products, and have it verified so you can be assured your money has gone to the right people.

PaperTale has been two years in the making, and is finally ready to make its mark on the world. They already have a proof of concept, through the way of a textile company in Pakistan, where all of their new clothes are manufactured using this technology in mind. The tech isn’t limited to textiles though, with PaperTale the possibilities are almost endless.

If you’re one of the many people concerned about workers’ rights and the environment and want to ensure that what you buy is ethical and complements your principles, PaperTale is the technology that will get you where you want to be. To show your support, their crowdfunding campaign is about to go underway on Kickstarter on 13th November, where you’ll have the chance to be the first to use the new technology.

Six interesting ERC20 projects to invest in right now

In the last few months our editorial team have been flooded with pitches from a variety of token based startups. We’ve read white papers on everything from blatant scams through to fairytale ideas and everything in between.

As an investor it can be hard to cut through all this clutter and find the next big token, especially one that will make a good return on your investment. This is getting considerably harder with scammers becoming more creative when their marketing techniques and ideas.

That said every so often we do come across innovative blockchain projects that genuinely fix a problem and are set to revolutionise their respective industry.

Our team have researched six promising ERC20 tokens backed startups we think will make great investments.

HelloGold

HelloGold is not a Blockchain firm you might be familiar with, despite the company raising just over 17,000 Ether in a token sale earlier this year.

The project aims to simplify the purchase and management of Gold through a smartphone app for low to medium income customers based in poorer parts of the world.

Built on the Ethereum blockchain the project helps do what traditional gold investing cannot – it provides greater transparency and security for gold owners and verifies the amount of gold being held by each person whilst cross-checking with daily gold list custodians who physically store the gold in a fully insured vault in Singapore.

Why is this important? It means every gram of gold only has one owner and is completely traceable.

HelloGold have already delivered on many fronts. Their app is already available to download on Google Play and gold purchase trails are already unddrway in Malaysia.

They have also recently partnered with blockchain startup Aeon credit who have agreed to provide financing to customers at competitive rates.

It’s the first certified Shariah compliant online gold platform in the world, during the token sale they attracted investment from heavyweight venture-capital firm Fenbushi Capital with Bo Shen from the firm also joining the advisory board.

As for the team it includes CEO Robin Lee who is the former CFO of the World Gold Council with a strong background in financial roles.

Roger Ward also has vast experience working in the gold industry, having most recently worked at the World Gold Council developing strategy and managing complex projects in London. Other team members have come from roles at the Royal Bank Scotland Group, Wolff Olins PLC, AEON Group and Wykeen Seet was the VP at Bangkok Bank in Thailand.
At the time of writing one HelloGold (HGT) costs $0.008512, making it a bargain.
It is currently trading on EtherDelta, HitBTC and Coss.

Cindicator

Cindicator is a decentralised analytics platform powered by ‘hybrid’ intelligence. The project raised a cool 55,569 Ether in the token sale earlier this year with over 4,000 participants.

Cindicator uses the wisdom of the crowd to determine answers to market changes. By aggregating opinions from a wide range of forecasters in different countries with different professional backgrounds, personal experience etc the platform can accurately quantify and provide accurate predictions when hedging trades.

The team behind Cindicator is what makes it a very promising token to watch. Names include Charlie Shrem COO at Jaxx, who is also a founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, Anthony Diiorio Founder at Jaxx and Ethereum, Marcus Killick Chairman of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, Evan Cheng Director of Engineering at Facebook, Anton Govor head of strategy at Moscow Exchange, CFO and co-founder of changelly Konstantin Gladych.

The current price of one CND token is a steal at $0.016822. Trading is taking place on both HitBTC and Mercatox.

VeChain

Established two years ago in Singapore VeChain is a product management platform built on the Ethereum Blockchain. They aim to revolutionise how products are processed through the supply chain by simplifying how manufacturers manage, collect and share data with vendors and consumers.

VeChain is already making waves by securing some very promising partnerships. Recently they were accepted into an incubation program launched by accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). They have also partnered with the world’s largest freight company, Kuehne & Nagel. The firm has a yearly revenue of around $21 billion. VeChain will help smartify parcels with chips linked to data held on the Blockchain to make tracking, managing and global collaboration more efficient.

VEN token is currently trading on Binance, Liqui, HitBtc, Coss, OpenLedger DEX, Kucoin and EtherDelta at $0.25 per token.

Tronix

Beijing-based blockchain startup TRON is a protocol for the global digital entertainment industry. It provides developers with the infrastructure for app development and smart networks which in layman’s terms means TRON is developing a worldwide free content entertainment system built on the blockchain which will enable users to publish, store and own media in a decentralised manner.

Tron’s founder Justin Sun is no stranger to the entertainment industry and was named in Forbe’s China 2015, 30 under 30.

He was also a former Chief Representative at Ripple and has since turned Peiwo, a streaming app into the leading live-streaming app in China. He will also bring the apps 10 million active userbase into the TRON ecosystem giving the project a solid user base from the get go.

Other members of the team include Jihan WU, CEO of Bitmain, Shuoji Zhou, partner of FBG Capital, Chaoyong Wang and founder of ChinaEquity Group.

The price of one TRX is currently $0.001956 and can be purchased on Binance, Liqui, Gatecoin, Mercatox, HitBtc and EtherDelta.

Request Network

Fin-tech firm Request Network has made waves in the last couple of months when it raised a cool $33,600,000 in their initial coin offering. Unlike many Blockchain firms they were actually founded in 2015 and started receiving support very early on from ING bank. Request Network aims to become a decentralised network for payment requests allowing businesses or anyone for that matter to request monies from just about anywhere. It is looking to position itself as a payment provider like paypal, stripe etc with one of its main uses being invoice management on a distributed ledger.

Notably Request Network was the first ICO to be incubated by the well known American-based seed accelerator YCombinator.

Not only is Request Network utilising the Ethereum Blockchain but also other technologies including Civic, Aragon and 0x. The team behind Request Network also have great experience in the finance industry having founded money transfer service Moneytis. Gilles Fedak co-founder of iEx.ec also sites on the advisory board.

As blockchain starts being implemented into mainstream services it is crucial that tools and services are available to simplify and automate migration from traditional billing and invoicing systems through to blockchain based approaches. We Request.Network will be that bridge.

Utrust

Similar to Request.Network and dubbed the “payments platform of the future” Utrust aims to take the benefits of PayPal and weave them in to Blockchain technology to create the ultimate online payment gateway that will protect buyers with mediation and sellers.

Utrust is a member of the Crypto Valley Association and is also supported by the Swiss government.
The team behind Utrust come from a variety of backgrounds including finance, banking, UX and cyber security.

The price of one Utrust token is just 6.5 cents through the crowdsale and is expected to be trading on EtherDelta very soon.

Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company PEMEX, will accept Ethereum at participating gas stations starting December 1st, 2017. Franchisee owners will launch the pilot using Beluga Pay’s mobile point of sale system that is currently in private beta.

PEMEX is one of the world’s largest non-publicly traded companies, has over 100,000 employees and enjoys a virtual monopoly over exploration and gas pumps across Mexico.

“We are proud to integrate cryptocurrency payments within such an established business as PEMEX and by 2018, Beluga tokenholders will be able to share the fees on our platform ” says Beluga Pay CEO, Alejandro Avila.

Beluga Pays Goals During the Pilot

Our goal with the pilot is to have sufficient data and customer feedback to present to key decision makers at PEMEX for a full-scale implementation.

Additional pilot details:

The PEMEX Pilot starts on December 1, 2017 with one gas station using Beluga Pay. The gas station is open 24 hours a day and can be found here.

Beluga Pay plans to have 5 gas station using Beluga Pay by the end of January 2018.

Beluga Pay is targeting to onboard over 100 gas stations using Beluga Pay.

Overview on PEMEX

PEMEX was founded in 1938 and is the state-owned petroleum company that has a virtual monopoly on petroleum exploration and gas stations in Mexico.
In 2006, Financial Times reported PEMEX having assets of $415B USD (source: FT.com). PEMEX employs over 100,000 people in Mexico.

Deal Mechanics with PEMEX Gas Stations

Beluga Pay CEO, Alejandro Avila, at the first PEMEX station to accept ETH in Mexico.

Beluga Pay is working directly with franchisee owners. Below are additional details on pilot specifics:

A risk of working directly with franchisee owners in a bottom-up approach is that we will need more sales people to educate stakeholders. On the positive side, we can acquire direct customer feedback from franchisee owners and implement product updates faster versus a top-down approach.

Most PEMEX gas stations already use a third party processor and this pilot would only be able to help users transact with cryptocurrency.

Beluga Pay will be doing all the settlement instantly directly with the franchisee owners. At first, Beluga Pay will have a cash reserve with the merchant, in this case the merchant carries little to no risk.

Since this is the first pilot of its kind we are acting as the guarantor of the transaction and providing instant fiat payments to the franchisee owners (merchants).

As the merchants see the system working and trust the process we can offer various forms of payments and direct settlements.

Why PEMEX Needs the Blockchain

“The duty of youth is to challenge corruption”. -Kurt Cobain
PEMEX is state-owned and accounts for a large part of Mexico’s income, we believe these funds flowing in a transparent manner will benefit Mexican citizens.

We believe that if we are able to make inroads with franchisee owners and PEMEX we could be in a position to provide transparency on all funds (FIAT, Cash and Crypto) being processed by PEMEX.

Source: VICE News

PEMEX loses between $5B–10B in petroleum theft annually. VICE has a good documentary monitoring the situation. Blockchain could help to control and monitor the supply and ensure that reporting discrepancies do not happen.

Next stop: Global

We are humbled to see over 50 countries and 1,800 registered buyers already participating in our tokensale and the amount of interest generated to take our product global from United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, Panama, Brazil, Egypt and more.

We are already in partnership discussions with several banking partners and merchants who would like to use Beluga Pay products as their point of sale system in several different parts of the world.

Beluga Pay believes that financial inclusion starts with merchants accepting multiple payment options- including FIAT, Crypto and Credit — all in one mobile point of sale system.

Hello Gold is a Shariah compliant gold investment app that allows anyone to buy and sell Gold hassle free. Its built on the Ethereum Blockchain with an aim to help the millions of low to medium income people from emerging countries save in Gold as apposed to their unstable local currency.

We spoke with Robin Lee, the CEO of HelloGold(former CFO of the World Gold Council) to find out more since the successful token sale which raised 17,149 ETH.

Can you briefly explain what HelloGold is?

“The amount of money in a person’s wallet should not be a barrier to his ability to access financial products that the rich enjoy. HelloGold wants to remove affordability and accessibility from the equation through the democratisation and digitisation of financial saving and loan products using real assets starting with gold” Robin Lee CEO HelloGold.

HelloGold has created an easy way for mass market customers to preserve their wealth by buying gold through a secure mobile app

How do customers purchase Gold, do they have to buy HelloGold tokens? Or only in RM1?

HelloGold is currently only available in the Malaysian market – we have plans to expand in 2018. For our customers, there are 2 ways to buy gold:

HelloGold app customers can log in and buy gold 24/7 once they have cleared the KYC process and topped up the app with cash using online banking. Prices track global market spot price and are updated every 5 minutes throughout the day. App customers can buy from as little as RM1. Customers buy, store and sell the gold which is physically vaulted down in Singapore. They can also gift the gold to another account holder, have the gold physically delivered or take a collateralised loan against the gold.

For people that are comfortable using crypto currency, HelloGold has recently launched our gold-backed token (GBT). Each GBT is fully backed by 1g of PAMP 99.99% investment grade gold vaulted in Singapore. GBTs will be available for purchase directly from HelloGold over the next few months to enable us to gauge demand

Why is Blockchain technology needed for buying Gold? What benefits does it provide to the consumer?

HelloGold uses blockchain technology to provide 3 benefits:

Transparency

By publishing the smart contracts and incorporating a blockchain explorer (transaction navigator), it will be possible to review the full list of anonymised transactions and calculate the amount of gold that HelloGold is holding on behalf of customers. This, in turn, can be compared not only to the amount of gold published in the customer gold list (anonymised) but also against the records managed by our custodian.

Security

HelloGold has incorporated several security mechanisms to protect customer accounts. All connections are encrypted using HTTPS. Internal API calls between the core components are secured with additional secret keys and firewall rules that limit interactions between trusted systems. For external facing APIs, for example APIs used by our mobile application, the API calls are further secured with a combination of industry standard OAUTH and secure tokens for each mobile device. The addition of a distributed record adds a further level of security from internal and external attempts to alter account data without leaving an audit trail. The smart contracts are being developed with best practices in mind following constant review of public audit documents. This should ensure that customer accounts are true and accurate.

Access

In addition, the Ethereum smart contracts enable HelloGold to create GBT, tradeable on any exchange which accepts them.With HGF’s gold-backed token everyone will only need the equivalent of a fraction of a dollar to save through gold (GBT works to 18dp). This will make the HelloGold platform available to everyone anywhere in the world

Do you think HelloGold will change how we buy gold in the future?

We are only at the start of our journey to impact the lives of the underserved and unbanked in emerging economies. Since our public launch in April, HelloGold has changed the way for over 4,000 customers when it comes to wealth preservation by providing a modern, convenient and cost efficient access to gold.

We have ambitious plans to expand the use of the product with both new partners and into new markets, to change how more people are able to access affordable financial products that were previously only accessible to the wealthy

Can you share any future plans or partnerships ?

We outlined our expansion plans in the whitepaper that we wrote for the recent token sale, full details can be found there.

In short, HelloGold plans to expand into new geographic markets, specifically Thailand, China, Indonesia and Philippines plus expand the product with new features/technology, asset classes (eg silver/platinum), partners which will enable us to serve new customer segments.

We are also increasingly approached by potential partners in other regions like the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central Asia as well as Africa to consider expansion into those markets.

Who’s your target market for the app?

The ultimate customers of HelloGold’s platform, are those are not well served by their existing financial institutions and the unbanked. Financial institutions already provide a variety of easy ways for the high net worth and mass affluent market segments to invest in assets like gold so that they can diversify risks at the portfolio level but they do not enable the less affluent customer the same access. HelloGold targets two key market segments: the consuming middle class and the emerging middle class. In ASEAN and China alone, these two groups comprise 55% of the total labour force of 814m people. They saved approx. $505b in 2016, of which we estimate that $212b was in cash deposits.

Why are you running HelloGold on the Ethereum Blockchain over other similar technologies ?

HelloGold is using Ethereum as it is currently the most widely accepted platform that offers all the benefits of a blockchain (full traceability, non-repudiability etc.) and multiple source language implementations that encourage integration. Ethereum will handle only the parts needing consensus, transparency and accountability. Other services will continue to be provided using existing technology.

HelloGold needs a transactional blockchain with a powerful system of smart contracts which have the ability to ensure that a transaction can combine with the results of previous transactions to provide auditable consistent results. To date, Ethereum is the only stable system that has achieved widespread adoption. The decades of experience of our senior development team tell us to avoid anything experimental to run a live system.

Will you be expanding into other metals such as Silver?

Yes. We intend to create other real asset-backed tokens over the next 12 months.

What are you looking forward to in the blockchain space in 2018?

In HelloGold we are looking forward to moving our app backend onto the Ethereum network to provide our customers with greater security and transparency over their gold holding.

HelloGold intends to add different real asset backed tokens and providing more support to entities which support the twin objectives of 1) increasing mass market use of blockchain technology and 2) democratising access for the underserved and unbanked to financial products through the digitisation of these products.

Overall, we think that the blockchain space will continue to develop and mature through 2018. If the pace of change is as rapid as 2017, the industry will be significantly different at this time next year

BP and Royal Dutch Shell have today formed a consortium with various other energy companies to develop a blockchain-backed trading platform for commodities.

Expected to launch by the end of 2018 the platform will significantly help cut costs in oil trading and streamline various aspects of the industry including the replacement of paper contracts. Swiss based commodity trading firm Mercuria also joined today has long been an advocate of paperless contracts.

Other members of the consortium include ABN Amro, Norwegian oil firm Statoil, Koch Supply & Trading, trading house Gunvor, ING and Societe Generale.

“I am very excited about this initiative,” said Anthony van Vliet, ING’s Global Head of Trade and Commodity Finance, “Marquee brands and competitors in the energy, trade and banking industry sharing one vision gives us a great opportunity to transform processing in the energy trade commodity sector”

In a statement, the consortium expressed a desire to see this form of trading replace traditional methods: “Over time, the new venture intends to lead the migration of all forms of energy transaction data to the blockchain, improving data quality, further strengthening security and increasing the speed of settlements industry-wide, while reducing the cost for industry participants.”

The new venture is seeking regulatory approvals and would be run as an independent entity, the consortium said in a statement.

Other companies trying to revolutionise the energy sector with Blockchain technology are Grid+ which has so far raised 38,000 Ether and PowderLedger whose ICO has not ended raising $13 million dollars.

With increased transparency and independence from central government blockchain technologies are slated to revolutionise the energy industry for both consumers and producers.

In January, IBM and Samsung unveiled an early platform for controlling connected devices based on a blockchain concept called ADEPT. This platform uses software developed on the Ethereum blockchain that authenticates “smart contracts” that represent micro-transactions between appliances within a home to enable them to react autonomously and instantaneously to varying conditions.

Israeli Blockchain firm Lendoit welcomes two new experts on to its advisory board.

High profile advisors Eddy Travia & Richard Titus have joined the advisory board of Lendoit, an Israeli-based financial firm that is using blockchain technology to revolutionise the peer-to-peer lending industry.

Travia, a key figure in the blockchain space since 2013, co-founder of SeedCoin and blockchain Space, and current CEO of investment firm Coinsilium brings a wealth of experience to the project.

With an impressive portfolio that already includes RSK, Factom, CoinDash and SatoshiPay. Travia was also nominated among the top 3 ‘Most Influential Investors of the Year’ at Blockchain Awards 2014 and has been a major influence in the space ever since.

Titus is currently the managing partner at ARK ICO Advisors, a Singapore based firm advising ICO projects all over the world including AdEx, Pillar & Hive. he brings over 20 years of technology, scaling and development experience to the project.

Having nurtured over 15 successful initial coin offerings the two new additions to the Lendoit advisory board will help pave the the firm’s success in the lucrative P2P industry.

Utilizing the Ethereum blockchain, Lendoit is a decentralised peer-to-peer lending platform that brings lenders and borrowers together globally using Smart Contracts on the blockchain to ensure transparency, trust, reduced risk and circumvent intermediaries.

Borrowers are able to download the Lendoit app and request a loan which is then auctioned to verified lenders on the platform, this provides borrowers with the ability to browse bids and accept the best loan rates to suit their circumstances.

Despite it not launching until next year Lendoit has already created strong ties with governments and corporations one of Israel’s biggest investment firms Migdal Investment Banking. Established in 1965 and part of Migdal Capital Markets Group, it currently manages assets valued at $9 billion for thousands of clients in the Israeli private, business and public sectors.

Compared to other P2P lending platforms on the market such as ETHlend and Salt, Lendoit offers a competitive advantage in various areas such as decentralised intermediate, interest auctions, and compensation funds.

Lendoit so far have also partnered with YETAX, Smartech, WHISP R&D, The Hive Project and Wings.

Launched just last week by Jersey-based financial firm CoinShares, the Ether Tracker One and Ether Tracker Euro exchange-traded note (ETN) has now surpassed $10 million since trading on Nasdaq Stockholm.

CoinShares combined assets under management (AUM) (which included the Bitcoin Tracker One and Bitcoin Tracker Euro) are now at $330 million since launching in 2015.

“When the group’s bitcoin ETNs – which are now at $330MM in AUM – launched in 2015, it took one year to attract the initial $10MM in AUM. The Ether Trackers achieved that in less than a week” says Ryan Radloff, Principal at CoinShares.

Due to popular demand by investors CoinShares is now providing professional asset research into the top 5 crypto-assets, this they believe is something new due to all previous research that was carried out more or less focused just on Bitcoin.

The first research is named Ether Asset Highlight launched today: https://coinshares.co.uk/#research

“We are excited to bring CoinShares Research to life as we begin to support the needs of the next wave of crypto investors. Now that we have a team covering ether, bitcoin and a few others on a full-time basis, expect more great coverage to come soon,” says Ryan Radloff, Principal at CoinShares.

The brand comprises two exchange traded bitcoin notes (COINXBT & COINXBE), two exchange traded ether notes (COINETH & COINETHE) and two funds (GABI & CoinShare Fund 1). All of these represent ‘first of their kind’ products in their respective categories.

For many investing in cryptocurrencies can be unfamiliar territory due to the complexity of managing wallets, dealing with exchanges and the related security concerns. ETN’s act as a gateway, simplifying the process for everyday investors who want to dabble in the cryptocurrency market but don’t know how.

Jersey-based CoinShares announced today that two Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) connected to the price of the Ethereum cryptocurrency can now be traded on Nasdaq.

Denominated in both Swedish Kronor and Euro, the ETNs are designed to track the price of Ethereum and are based on the average value of a select group of liquid Euro exchanges.

This comes as no surprise with other providers including XBT issuing similar ETNs for tracking Bitcoin last month and GABI, the first regulated BTC hedge fund combining the two entities to launch CoinShares who have crypto assets of around $300 million. These previous ETN’s were made available to investors through Hargreaves Lansdown.

Investing in cryptocurrencies have been notoriously difficult for everyday investors due to wallet, transaction and exchange complexities however with CoinShares historic NASDAQ announcement non tech-savvy investors will now have full access to the cryptocurrency market.

In the last 18 months at least fifteen cryptocurrency funds have launched and around five crypto-based investment products are currently pending review with regulators in the U.S. and elsewhere.

“Today is a historical moment for Ethereum and ether as an asset; and for the future of crypto-assets. It was a little over two years ago that the bitcoin ETNs began trading – offering investors exposure to bitcoin via an established exchange for the first time. Today, we are able to bring ether to the market and mark another major first. It is important to remember how far and how fast the space has matured in the less than 8 years since this revolution began,” says Ryan Radloff, Co-Principal at CoinShares.

We put some questions to CoinShares in a short interview:

What type of investors do you hope to attract with the ETH ETNs?

Product is for any investor who has qualified access to Nasdaq Stockholm.

Can you give us an estimated $ price of what you think Ethereum will trading at by 2018?

No price target right now – though we did a valuation model in our latest Ethereum research which may be helpful

Do you plan to trade on other exchanges such in currencies such as £ or $ ?

Cannot comment on future plans of that nature, apologies

What other cryptocurrencies do you have in mind? are you open to other ETNs with other currencies?

We delivered this product because the market had been requesting it since last year. We will follow market demand for future products as well.

Renowned businessman and security analyst John McAfee has partnered with and will sit on the advisory board of BitIndia, an open source blockchain wallet and exchange for the streets of India.

With less than 0.5% of indians currently utilising Bitcoin, the company aims to educate and promote cryptocurrencies to directly take on the very real and growing issue of high banking rates that currently plague over 1.2 billion of the country’s people.

This is to be achieved through an easy to use cryptocurrency platform that takes away the complexities of cryptocurrencies and replace them with an intuitive system which not only allows the average layman to store and use Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple currencies but to also trade them against the national currency, the Indian Rupee.

Plans also include for seamless integration on a local level allowing users to access terminals that allow for everyday and recurring purchases such as groceries, bills and dining out.

Given the size of the Indian population and its urgent need for a decentralised and fairer economic system if executed properly BitIndia is in a prime position to spearhead and develop the Indian Cryptocurrency space into a major global player, one that will shortly rival China and South Korea.

John Mcafee’s no stranger to business, his role at Bitindia will bring a great deal of unparalleled expertise and guidance.

This year we’ve seen the launch of many ICO’s, with the majority just being blatant scams or just down right useless.

That said every so often a project comes along that not only only has a genuine purpose but also thrives in a blockchain environment. This week that project is Upfiring, a blockchain company aiming to revolutionise the P2P file sharing industry as we know it.

Utilising the Ethereum Blockchain, Upfiring has created a decentralised autonomous P2P network that allows anyone to easily share files regardless of if they are on a desktop computer or smartphone.

File-sharing is currently seen as an unrewarding process for both seeders (due to little to no return for sharing) and frustrating for downloaders (due to the lack of seeders and slow speeds).

Upfiring has a solution to address this. The company has developed technology which solves many of the current problems we see today with P2P file sharing such as seeding, searching, downloading, ratings, and peer evaluation.

In layman’s terms the Upfiring process is as follows:

A seeder shares a file through the Upfiring network

The file is encrypted by the platform

A downloader requests access to the seeded file but can only download once they have paid using the currency of the network which is UFR tokens.

Once downloaded and paid for in full the file can be decrypted.

The above is a seamless process that requires no technical; knowhow on the user’s part. Given that UFR is also a tradable currency allows both seeders and downloaders to utilise exchanges to buy and sell the tokens as and when required.

Despite file sharing existing since the early days of the internet recent statistics show that the industry has continually grown over fifty percent since 2008. With no sign of this slowing down the industry has long been overdue a technology overhaul to speed up and improve efficiency.

Some of the Issues with current file sharing platforms:

Lack of seeders

No benefit to seeders

Risk for seeders

Snooping/ privacy concerns

Massive disparity between file download and availability ratio.

Benefits of incentivised file sharing:

Seeders are compensated (resulting in more high quality seeds)

Larger variety of seeds

Seeds can be rated more effectively

Faster access and downloads

A self sufficient system that settles payment publicly

Upfiring is currently running an initial crowd offering where anyone can invest in the technology in exchange for Upfiring tokens. You can find out more about the project and support it at: https://upfiring.com/

Their whitepaper can be accessed here: https://upfiring.com/Upfiring_Whitepaper.pdf